US, South Korea to stage major joint exercisesSeoul (AFP) Feb 21, 2013 -
The United States and South Korea announced plans Thursday for major annual joint military exercises as regional tensions run high following North Korea's third nuclear test.

A joint air, ground and naval field training exercise known as Foal Eagle will be held from March 1 to April 30. Separately, US and South Korean troops will stage a computer-simulated drill named Key Resolve from March 11-21.

Pyongyang habitually denounces the joint drills as a rehearsal for invasion.

Seoul and Washington insist the manoeuvres are defensive in nature. "The exercises are designed to enhance the security and readiness of (South Korea) and are deterrent in nature," they said in a statement.

Foal Eagle will include about 10,000 US forces along with a far bigger number of South Korean troops. Key Resolve involves about 3,500 US and 10,000 South Korean soldiers.

The United States has based troops in the South since the 1950-53 war and the force currently numbers 28,500.

South Korea has staged a series of military drills separately or jointly with the United States since the North launched a long-range rocket in December.

Earlier this month Seoul and Washington conducted a joint naval exercise with a US nuclear submarine off South Korea's east coast, followed by a joint air force drill.

Pyongyang insists the December launch put a satellite into orbit for peaceful research, but critics said it amounted to a banned ballistic missile test that marked a major advance for the communist state's nuclear weapons programme.

Tension grew further on the Korean peninsula following the North's nuclear test on February 12.

North Korea said the test -- widely condemned by the international community -- was a direct response to UN sanctions imposed on Pyongyang after last year's rocket launch.

Pyongyang is already under international sanctions for conducting two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, which both came after long-range rocket launches.

Japan detects xenon in air after N. Korea nuclear testTokyo (AFP) Feb 21, 2013 - Japanese planes detected a trace amount of xenon-133 during monitoring flights over Japan the day after North Korea carried out its third nuclear test last week, the science ministry said Thursday.

The radioactive material amounting to 1.9 millibecquerels per cubic metre of air was detected from samples collected at an altitude of 300 metres (990 feet) off the coast of Aichi prefecture in central Japan, Jiji Press reported.

It was the first time Japan had detected xenon-133 since it strengthened radiation monitoring in response to the test on February 12, the news agency said.

Xenon-133 is released into the air not just by an atomic explosion but also from nuclear power plants and medical institutions.

Ministry officials quoted by Jiji said they did not know whether the xenon was connected to the North's underground test.

South Korean warships and air force planes equipped with highly sensitive detection devices were deployed after the blast to try and collect any traces of radioactive fallout.

But Seoul experts said on February 14 they had been unable to detect any.

Experts are eager to discover whether the North used highly enriched uranium for its latest test rather than plutonium as in 2006 and 2009.

An enriched uranium programme would give the North a new and easier way to produce bomb-making material.

Park Geun-Hye will be sworn in as South Korea's first female president next week -- a historic landmark clouded by North Korea's recent nuclear test and threats emanating from Pyongyang.

The daughter of the late dictator and vehement anti-communist Park Chung-Hee, Park campaigned on a policy of cautious engagement with Pyongyang in contrast to her hawkish predecessor, Lee Myung-Bak.

But her plans are likely to be shelved, at least for the short term, after the February 12 nuclear test angered the public in the South and emboldened hawks in Park's ruling conservative party.

The UN Security Council is still debating how to respond, but is almost certain to toughen sanctions on Pyongyang -- a move that could trigger a sharp response from the North and possibly even another nuclear test.

Kim Jang-Soo, a former defence minister who has been appointed Park's national security adviser, signalled on the same day as the test that the new administration's policy could "not be the same as before".

Park strongly condemned the test and warned the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un that it would bring about its own collapse with its complete isolation from the international community.

Park's first challenge will be hardliners in her own party who are staunchly opposed to engaging Pyongyang and some of whom have even begun calling in public for South Korea to build its own nuclear deterrent.

"We urgently need to solve the unbalanced nuclear capability between the two Koreas and may need nuclear arms ourselves for minimum self-defence," said Won Yoo-Chul, a senior member of Park's New Frontier Party.

A survey by Gallup Korea published on Wednesday showed more than 60 percent of South Koreans support the idea of Seoul having its own nuclear weapons capability.

At the same time, Park's efforts to mollify her party hawks are being undermined by the increasingly bellicose statements coming from the North.

On Tuesday, the North Korean envoy at the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva warned that South Korea faced "final destruction" if Seoul and its allies pushed for tougher UN resolutions over the North's nuclear programme.

Kim Yong-Hyun, a professor of North Korea studies at Dongguk University, said Park's hands would be tied after she took office.

"The UN Security Council will surely impose more sanctions that will be supported by Seoul," Kim said. "In that climate, I see little possibility for substantial cross-border talks for six months at least."

Park had promised a package of substantial welfare programmes aimed at the South's rapidly growing elderly population, but the North's test has already resulted in a shift in spending priorities.

"We are now faced with an unexpected need to increase the defence budget," Park said Monday.

The North has traditionally sought to test the mettle of the South's new leaders as they take office, sometimes with a view to forcing Seoul -- and the United States -- into negotiations.

Despite the difficult environment, Moon Chung-In, a politics professor at Yonsei University, said Park needed to move swiftly and "proactively" to position South Korea as the chief international mediator with the North.

"That way Park will enjoy more diplomatic leverage with China and the US than before... so she needs to take a more open and proactive stance," Moon said.

Inter-Korean contacts have been effectively frozen since Seoul accused Pyongyang of torpedoing one of its warships in March 2010, and halted almost all trade and aid to the impoverished North.

The North denied involvement, but went on to shell an island on the South Korean side of their disputed maritime border in November 2010, leaving four South Koreans dead and sparking brief fears of a full-scale conflict.

Paik Hak-Soon, a North Korean analyst at the Sejong Institute think tank, said the hardline stance of Park's predecessor, president Lee, had failed to produce any results and should be discarded.

"If Park takes a confrontational stance, she will end up repeating the same mistake as Lee, who not only failed to curb the North's nuclear ambitions, but also saw inter-Korea relations worsen," Paik said.

"She needs to act as soon as possible to restart a dialogue, though it won't be politically easy," he said.

Researchers See Ionospheric Signature of North Korean Nuclear TestFredericton, Canada (SPX) Feb 20, 2013
The explosion of an underground nuclear device by North Korea this week disturbed the Earth's ionosphere. The blast generated infrasonic waves that propagated all the way to the upper atmosphere causing small variations in the density of electrons there.
By analyzing the signals from GPS satellites collected at ground-based monitoring stations in South Korea and Japan, scientists at the Ca ... read more

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